“Nella vita tirò tardi” (“In Life He Stayed Up Late”) is a book created in memory of Gianfranco Marabelli, former President of DDB Italy and a multi-award-winning creative at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, as well as an iconic figure in the history of Italian advertising, who passed away in 2022.

Published in an exclusive and limited edition of only 300 copies and presented to the public on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Italian Art Directors Club, the book retraces Marabelli’s life through the memories and stories of those who knew him.

Divided into eight thematic chapters, it is conceived as a sort of scrapbook in which words, photographs, drawings, colors and campaigns coexist and interact, blended together by the stylistic obsessions so dear to the celebrated art director: his beautiful handwriting and the overlays of tracing paper on which he loved to jot down corrections; serif typefaces and the use of bright colors—particularly red and blue—which also characterized his outfits; halftone screens, dyed-in-the-mass colored boards, and spontaneous sketches. And, of course, his unmistakable moustache, which he wore throughout his life.

The book measures 245 × 320 mm, consists of 273 pages, and is perfect bound with an exposed spine and a die-cut cover printed on Fedrigoni Sirio Iris blue cardstock and Sirio Lampone red paper. The cover panels are rigid and finished flush with the edges, echoing the famous Poliplat boards on which presentation layouts were mounted for more than 50 years. All internal pages are printed in four-color process on Fedrigoni Arena Extra White Smooth paper. At the beginning of each chapter, a 120-micron transparent PET sheet is tip-glued along the binding edge to the page.

Roughly at the center of the book, there is an A5 insert printed on 70 g/m² paper. Resting on the cover is a mirror-finish card, attached with a single glue dot so it can be removed.

Finally, the large cover titles and the opening pages of each chapter feature the specially designed typeface “Gianfranco Script,” created to evoke Marabelli’s distinctive handwriting.